Men and Grief: from a Men's Therapist Perspective

Men and Grief: from a Men’s Therapist Perspective

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When our grief cannot be spoken, it falls into the shadow and re-arises in us as symptoms.

– Francis Weller

Grief is a normal and important part of human experience. For many men growing up in a world where we are often taught that emotional expression is a sign of weakness, grief becomes a very difficult undertaking. The pain of loss in a man’s life may lead to the forced action of concealing one’s pain due to the cultural messages we men receive. It is so important that men begin to work through these societal constraints so that we can move through the difficulties of loss and to the renewal and freedom of having come out on the other side of our grief.

With all these reasons to dislike grief, what is the best way to deal with it? This way: by letting it into your life. Why? Because grief has an important purpose. It helps you heal. And, it allows you, in time, to feel better. It shows you how you can grow from your loss rather than just be diminished by it. The fact is, it’s only by grieving that you can heal. If in one way or another you do not grieve, you will not move forward.

(Golden and Miller, 2010).

What Grief Does For Us

Part of the human experience is our capacity to make meaning out of our lives. We are all compelled to understand what is happening to us and around us all the time. When something is lost it is imperative that we begin to make meaning out of that event. A loss could be another person, a pet, a job or something else is important to us. Grief is the process that we make meaning out of that loss.

In doing this we must allow the grief to work its painful magic through us. This means we must allow the grief to be felt in our bodies and understood in our minds. When we make meaning we create a narrative of what happened. If we do this without any conscious awareness the narrative that arises may not be in our best interest.

For example, when someone we love dies we may be angry and feel the deep injustice of this loss. We may start to blame a higher power, the person who died, or even ourselves. These types of narratives are understandable but they are not in our best interest. Blame doesn’t help us move to a place of resolution and completion. What I mean by these words is that the narrative is something that can help us feel an “okayness” with what happened. If our narrative ends in blame it often doesn’t feel okay, it feels incomplete.

Men And Emotions

If you’re like many, you were encouraged from the time you were very small to downplay or hide any hurt or pain you felt. You were told “big boys don’t cry,” if not verbally, then non verbally.

(Golden and Miller, 2010).

For many men the struggle of grief is the struggle of being engaged with our inner, emotional lives. For most of us we have a hard time allowing ourselves to be tuned into what is happening at a feeling level (sensations) and emotional level (the meaning we make out of sensations).

The cultural development of men is to ensure that men follow a script that they will do what is asked of them. This script has many components but one clear message most boys get growing up is that noticing and expressing emotions is what girls do. In order to be a strong, tough boy it is important to not feel or express emotions. If a boy does this he is often shamed into believing he is weak and thus less masculine.

As a result of this men struggle to engage their grief in the way that helps them to get through the pain of their loss.

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Sadness is often a big part of the grief process. For men (myself included) it is much easier to express anger about what has happened.

It is a way not to engage the despair of the loss but instead to feel the more active energy of anger. Our culture often portrays men in a way that isn’t expressing real pain. Maybe in a movie or in the arena of sports is true emotional pain allowed. This taboo against men’s emotional struggle is one of the challenges men face when they lose a loved one.

Men’s pain has become a taboo in our culture. Many people don’t want to see it, think about it, or talk about it.

(Golden and Miller, 2010).

The Painful Outcomes Of Unexpressed Grief

When grief is not expressed there are many things that can happen to a person’s mental and physical health. This can mean turning to substances or behavioral addictions to manage the pain one is feeling after loss. It can also lead to self-harm.

More often it is the mental health that suffers the most. An increase in anxiety and depressive symptoms start to emerge for someone who has not dealt with the loss of something important.

Buried grief can give rise to chronic anxiety and depression. And intolerable despair can lead to suicide or homicide. When we can’t tolerate the energy of a primary dark emotion, it is unable to move and so isolates rather than connects us.

(Greenspan, 2004)

It often seems like avoiding the inner discomfort of the emotional realm is the easiest path. In reality it leads to long-term consequences that can really impact our health. However, in feeling through the grief the body moves not just to a release of the painful emotions but it often can lead to a higher level of integration and the feeling of wholeness.

How To Allow Grief To Heal Us

I want to first say that every man may deal with grief in a different way. There is no one right way. It is important for the people who love a grieving person (women included) to accept their way of dealing with things. We all must open ourselves up to the process that a man needs to go through.

For any man that right now is in the anguish of grief my heart goes out to you. I know this pain and I care for how you’re feeling. My goal here is to give you some thoughts of how to make this easier not to judge you for how it is going.

Trust your need to be alone. Many men want to have the safety of space and separation in order to experience their emotions. This is okay and doesn’t feel like you have to express your feelings in a social or relational context. If you need to take time for yourself do this. Ask the people who want you to do it differently to respect your needs.

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Be patient with yourself. Grief is a journey and it often takes longer than we think or want it to take.

I often think that the amount of grief I feel is relational to the amount of love I feel for the person that I lost. This gives me some understanding of why it takes time to work through a loss.

Go at your pace. Sometimes there is a desire by more feminine beings to feel and express everything that is going on inside themselves. Take the time you need to get through this in the way that works for you. Taking little chunks of grief slowly may be a better way for your experience. This is your grief and you get to do this the way you want.

Listen to your body. When you feel sad or you feel a longing for the person lost, trust that this is not something wrong but actually an important signal from your body. Your body has a lot of wisdom to share and being tuned in to it can bring relief to the pain.

How This Shows Up In My Life

Going through grief for me has been a process of many different strategies. When my great grandma died when I was 8 years old I don’t think I really felt a lot about this. She was 94 and it made sense that it was her time. I mostly was watching how others were feeling about the loss as a way to make sense of my own loss.

When my grandma died about 12 years ago I allowed myself to feel more of the sadness. She too was dying after a long life. I still felt the pain of her loss. I noticed a longing to have spent more time with her and to wish I had prioritized our relationship more. When she was no longer available I wanted to have more time.

About five years ago my father-in-law passed away. He was a very dear man and I had a lot of respect for how he lived his life.

I felt like our relationship was just starting to get more intimate when he passed away. It felt unfair that he left at an age when he should have been enjoying his grandkids. I felt the loss in a much deeper way. It was also my wife’s loss and I noticed much of my grief was tied to supporting her through her grief.

I suspect that the masculine and the feminine experience grieve differently. When I was in my feminine energy I wanted to express the feelings inside me and to relate to those around me. When I was in my masculine energy I wanted to have solitude and consider the loss more in my thoughts than in my body. What I noticed about my father-in-law’s passing was how my masculine was so tied to supporting my wife’s grief and not so much to my own grief. I wanted to be the stable force in her life so that she could express the deep pain she felt through all of it. In some ways this wasn’t so much a limitation of my grief but a way that I accessed my pain as well.

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As I look back on that experience I realize that I can engage my grief in multiple numbers of ways. I can be in my more expressive feminine energy or in the more internal thoughtfulness of my masculine.

I think men need to be allowed to explore their grief in the way that best suits them. It is important to know that grief is dealt with differently by everyone and that we, as the ones attending to someone in grief, can support the person going through it how they want to do that. No pressure, no timelines, just loving supportive witnessing.

Another important way you can help a man who’s grieving is to beware of trying too hard to help him. There are many things he can do only for himself. He must feel his own emotions. He must go through his own ups and downs as he adapts to his loss. And he must learn from his own experiences as he moves forward in life. No matter how well-intentioned your motives, you ought not do for a man what is his alone to do.

(Golden and Miller, 2010)

Wishing You The Day You Need To Have!